My favourite cricketer: Iconic and irritating

Proud, prickly and passionate, no one riled England more than Javed Miandad – which is why Mike Marqusee loved him

For those of us who prefer a dash of the anti-hero in our heroes, Javed Miandad was never less than a compelling cricketer. Millions in Pakistan gave their hearts to him, while others in England, Australia and India found him supremely irritating. He gained a reputation as one of the game’s difficult customers and was routinely disparaged as “volatile”. But at the crease his record was one of phenomenal application and consistency ­– which is one reason some people found him so irritating.   

I first saw Miandad playing in 1978, fielding for a Packer-depleted Pakistan in a Test match against England. A catch went down and he sank to his knees, bewailing the cruel twist of fate. His young face was creased with emotion – a display of feeling rare on English cricket grounds in those days. 

When you watched Miandad you watched the whole human being, deeply invested in what he was trying to do, his blazing inner life – a mix of determination and calculation – somehow made visible in his eyes, his brow, his fidgeting, truculent movements. As with John McEnroe, the emotional intensity led to breaches of decorum. But as with McEnroe, the foibles were ingrained in the genius of the man.

His contretemps with Dennis Lillee at Perth provided some of the most memorable cricket images of the 1980s. The exchange of hostile gestures (Lillee gave Javed a kick in the shins and Javed retaliated with a raised bat) had pundits fuming but the episode hardly constituted a moral crisis for the game. With its scurrying silliness and little-and-large contrast, it was Kabuki theatrics, Punch and Judy, Itchy and Scratchy, and you had to laugh. 

Of the 16 batsmen to score more than 8,000 Test runs, only five (Sobers, Tendulkar, Lara, Ponting and Dravid) have higher averages than Miandad’s 52.57. But the greatness of Miandad lay not so much in the number of runs scored but when and how he scored them. Throughout his career Javed famously rose to the occasion. Back-to-the-wall defiance came naturally to him, as did bold aggression.

He was a hard-working, hard-thinking batsman, yet never a machine. His arsenal included an array of strokes that enabled him to score through any gap in the field (or over the fielders’ heads), an obdurate defence, tireless footwork and a mastery of gamesmanship. Facing fast bowlers, he liked to trade punch for punch, hook for bouncer; against the spinners, he seized any chance to knock them off line and out of the attack. Above all he adapted his game to the demands of the side and the state of the match.

He had all the gears and at his best he seemed able to shift from one to another at will. People across Pakistan came to have faith in his remarkable capacity to take command at a crucial juncture. As he imposed himself on his opponents, the small man seemed to grow to huge dimensions. 

His career-long rivalry with Imran Khan provided one of those archetypal dualities which flourish in cricket. They were the uncouth and the urbane, rough diamond and finished article, professional and amateur, commoner and elite. Of course, the contrast was always over-drawn and over-simplified. Miandad has repudiated the ‘street urchin’ tag, which he finds demeaning. He comes from a middle-class family and his brothers and sisters have college degrees. His father was a senior figure in Karachi cricket and he grew up steeped in a sophisticated cricket culture. 

But however contrived the archetypes might be, there’s no doubt Imran and Miandad made each other bristle. Their feud was real. But amazingly the friction proved a creative one, and together they led Pakistani cricket to its finest hours. In the late 1980s Pakistan were the only team able to match consistently the all-conquering West Indies. Though Miandad had struggled against the Caribbean quicks earlier in his career, in the drawn series of 1987-88 he mastered them, scoring remarkable centuries in successive matches off the bowling of Marshall, Walsh, Patterson and Ambrose. 

Before the 1992 World Cup he had been written off. But after two years in and out of the side, he staged a comeback that proved decisive in Pakistan’s ultimate triumph. With an average of 62 and five fifties, he was the tournament’s biggest run-maker. In both the semi-final against New Zealand and the final against England he played crucial knocks. 

Miandad relished India–Pakistan contests and was lucky enough to play through the one extended period of competition between the two teams, 1978-1989. In his 28 Tests against India he averaged 67.51 and in 35 one-day internationals 51. One innings climaxed with the so-called shot heard round the world, the impudent last ball six in Sharjah that many Indian fans can never forgive. 

Miandad finds it hard to understand why people see him as a contentious figure. All he’s ever done, he feels, is speak his mind and serve his country. He stands on his dignity. He refuses to be intimidated. When he faced a great bowler (or argued with an umpire) there was always a sense that honour was on the line. He dug his heels in. He nursed resentments and suspicions. But he was there in toto – the human being as a whole, with a sense of fun and mischief as well as combative fury – and that made for a riveting spectacle.

This article was published in the May 2006 edition of The Cricketer - the home of the best cricket analysis and commentary, covering the international, county, women's and amateur game

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